Every X-book considered and assembled into a slipshod time-line, September '63 to May '86.

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Top Twelve Team Tenures

Update: Somehow I took leave of my senses and forgot Havok and Polaris when I wrote this the first time round (in my defence, Claremont wrote that they were never "officially" X-Men by this point, but that's not particularly convincing). I've added them in now, having assumed they both joined from the first day they started living in the mansion.

Now that's Cyclops headed off under a cloud, I think it's time for a chart of the various X-Men's tenures on the team. Jean, Beast and Angel have all quit and returned at least once already. In the latter cases their time on the team is simply the sum of both tours of duty. With Jean, it's tough to tell exactly when she was and wasn't a member once she became Phoenix. There are a lot of possible permutations here, but I'd think the most sensible assumption is that she rejoined the team upon awakening in the hospital, left it when she believed all are dead, returned again when the X-Men arrive at Muir Island, and left at the point she started trying to kill her mates.

(For the purposes of this count, we assume that the origin stories for Cyclops, Iceman, Angel and Beast all take place concurrently, each one following on directly from the last). So, from shortest to longest, and in the notation (Y, M, W, D), we have:

=11. Polaris (1,1,3,5)

=11. Havok (1,1,3,5)

10. Banshee (1,1,2,0)

=6. Storm (1,3,0,3)

=6. Nightcrawler (1,3,0,3)

=6. Colossus (1,3,0,3)

=6. Wolverine (1,3,0,3)

5. Beast (2,6,0,6)

4. Marvel Girl (3,7,4,1)

3. Angel (3,8,1,4)

2. Iceman (3,8,2,3)

1. Cyclops (4,11,2,4)

(Incidentally, Mimic and Thunderbird were both around for about a month, Changeling reached fifteenth place with a tenure of sixteen days; the four "Deadly Genesis" X-Men managed a week apiece, and good old Sunfire managed to keep a lid on his insufferable twattishness fora whole 48 hours).